


Soulmate

by Wolf4986



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Heavy Angst, M/M, Poor Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Sad Ending, Spoilers, What Have I Done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 10:17:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13432608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf4986/pseuds/Wolf4986
Summary: A major battle against the titans lead to a major loss of soldiers that day. Things only got worse instead of better. Fate had never been on my side, but that particular day it seemed too hate me mores than usual.





	Soulmate

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't very happy when I wrote this and so my sadness just kinds translated into this. It's not very long but it's definitely gonna hit you in the feels. Anyways, if there's any glaring errors, drop me a comment and I'll fix it.

I carefully cut Eren from his titan, afraid to cut any of his limbs off. Despite my general indifference toward him and the other soldiers, I genuinely cared for them. Especially Eren.  


For whatever reason he was special. In all my life I had never fallen in love, yet Eren had thrown me for a loop I had not been prepared for. That was part of why I worked so hard to make sure he did not fall into the hands of the Military Police and by extension, Nile Dok. The other was because he caught my attention. No other soldier I knew carried a fire like Eren’s.  


Gracefully, I carried him and flew to the ground. When me feet hit solid ground, I layed Eren down on a clean patch of grass not too far from the decomposing form of his titan. But something was wrong. The scars next to his eyes weren't healing and he wasn't waking up. Panicked, I looked for Hanji, but no one was around. We were alone. By ourselves, and Eren might be dying and I had no way of knowing or how to save him.  


I sat down next to him watching him breathe. His chest rose up and down at a steady but shallow seeming pace. It worried me but I could do nothing about it. So I began talking.  


“You know Eren, I didn't think that I would like you the day that Erwin told me that a titan shifter had been found. I thought you'd be some brat who flaunted his powers and threw them in our face. Instead you shocked me. You looked so determined to become a member of the Survey Corp knowing the dangers that it held. There was this fierceness in your eyes that I cannot deny that I liked.  


“And then, when we gained custody of you and went out to that dirty old castle and you cleaned better than anyone else, including the people who had been members of my squad for years, I think it was then that I started to fall in love. Not because of your cleaning skills though, but just because of your sheer determination to succeed at everything you tried. I was convinced there was nothing you couldn't do when you set your mind to it.  


“And when I lost Erwin….. I thought that everything was falling apart again. But there you were, standing tall even though I knew the loss of yet another comrade had hurt you too. That's when I knew for sure I had dug a hole I could not dig myself out of. The truth is Eren,I'm…… I'm in love with you. And if I lose you, I don't know how much longer I can be humanity's strongest,”  


I looked down at Eren to see if his breathing had gotten any better. I did not see the change I had hoped to see. Once again I looked around to see if Hanji was near, not that she could treat this, but maybe she could do something. Maybe slow it down. Tears rolled down my face as I accepted the fact that Eren was turning to stone and there was nothing I could do about it.  


Even if Hanji arrived now, what could she do? Eren was dying and there was nothing we could do about it.  


“Eren please,” I begged. “Please don't leave me here alone. I can't do this without you,”  


I moved around his slowly changing body until I sat at his head. Gingerly, I picked his head up and laid it in my lap. I stroked the chestnut locks I had longed to touch or try tame since I first met him. I wanted to see if they were as soft as they looked. They were. I smiled through my pain. It was so silly to be thinking about how soft his hair was when he was dying.  


I longed to see vibrant green eyes stare up at me. I longed to see the smile he would have on his face as he gazed up at me. I longed to see him well and bickering with Jean or laughing with Armin and Mikasa. I longed just to see him well. Without the scars near his eyes and the blank look on his face. Even if that meant that he went on without me.  


I was an old man and Eren was so young. He had seen too much and experienced too much loss for his age. He deserved so much better. Better than anything I could give him. I cried harder. My shoulders shook and my vision blurred and my chest ached and my throat hurt from holding back the screams of my distress.  
The stone was reaching his chest now and soon Eren would be gone. There really was nothing we could do to save him now. Eren was going to die and I would never again see a smile on his face or the gem like green of his eyes. I would never hear him laugh or argue or shout that he was going to kill them all. He would die here on this battlefield where no one would remember him. And soon after I knew I would follow him.  


The stone finally reached his chest and I pressed my fingers against his throat only to feel his heartbeat fade. His chest stopped moving and I screamed loud and long and hurt. I didn't care if the titans found me. It didn't matter anymore. Eren was gone. And he was really all that mattered. And if the titans did come, it wasn't like they could eat Eren. He would be stone by the time they reached us.  
I didn't put his head down. I didn't want to believe he was gone or that he was turning to stone. So instead I focused on his face. I tried to memorize every part of it so that I could remember it when I died. I didn't want to forget a single detail. For a moment I almost thought he would wake up and ask me where the others were and if I knew if Armin and Mikasa were okay. But he didn't and the last bit of my hope was crushed as I accepted that humanity's hope was gone.  
I wished that if I sat here then the stone that had taken Eren from me would take me too. Secretly I wished that it would so so that everyone would know that without hope you cannot have strength and that without both, humanity would truly have nothing.  


Finally the stone reached his head. His blank expression was forever moulded into the stone. His hair stiffened and became solid. No one would ever know how Eren looked when he smiled or how green his eyes were. No one would know how beautiful his laugh was or how determined he was to protect those he deemed his family. No one would know that I loved him and I would never know if he loved me.  


I sat there a long time just holding his stone body. When I first cut Eren out of his titan the sun was low in the sky. When I finally decided I had to get up and try to find the others, the sun had disappeared and been replaced with the moon and the stars.  


When I finally found the camp made by the surviving soldiers I learned something that I had expected. Hanji had died saving another soldier. She was eaten by a titan and her body had not been recovered. She was gone. Just like Eren. There was truly nothing left for me now. My niece had also died. She was protecting another and was batted out of the sky. She was trying to distract a titan from a group helping wounded soldiers. I knew she would die nobly. Armin had yet to return if he even was alive. He probably wasn't.  


This past battle had taken its toll on everyone. No one was walking away unscathed. Some were touched by loss and others by the damage done to their bodies by the beasts that had once been human. I sat down heavily by the fire that had been started some time earlier. I was dead tired but knew that I wouldn't be able to sleep. Tentatively another soldier asked me if I had seen Eren. I told him Eren had also died protecting others.  


I did not tell them that he had turned to stone or that he had in a way saved me. I did not tell them that the love of my life had just died in my arms and that no I was not okay. I just sat there instead. Numb to it all. What could they do for me anyway? I doubted they would understand. So few of us fell in love. Those who did tried their best to ignore it knowing that one could die any day.  


It truly was tragic. If soulmates existed, then I felt as though I had surely lost mine. I thought it was ridiculous that the stars took the time to gaze down upon us and pair each one of us with a matching partner. Now I would tell you that it made sense that they did. Even the stars needed entertainment. Though I do not think that find our loses entertaining as they must have cared for us too.  
It was odd how much your view of the world changed when you lost those you loved. Mine certainly had. The only thing that was left for me to do now was die. This war with the titans was no longer important. All those who I cared about were dead, so there was nothing left for me to do. I carefully walked away from the group. I didn't want to draw attention to myself and what I was about to do. Thankfully nobody paid me any mind. They were to caught up in their own grief and pain to notice an old man walking away from the fire.  


I looked up at the stars. They really were beautiful. If there was some divine being who had created them, I wondered how long it had taken them to string up each one and find the perfect place for each of them. Absently, I deployed the hooks of my 3DM gear into a nearby tree and swung myself up. From this height I could see more stars than from the ground. I stood near the edge of the branch that held me. I didn't dare look down for fear of what I might see.  


And then I leapt. I twisted in the air to look up one last time towards the sky. My arms and legs flailed instinctively, trying to catch a branch or something that was not there. I imagined Eren and his smiling face as my body crashed into the ground. I did not feel the impact, but everything did go black.  


Back at the camp, everyone crowded around a bedraggled looking Armin. He was quickly filled in on what happened. A soldier came running up yelling that Levi had jumped. Another soldier walked over and calmed them down before the panicked soldier was able to tell the others that Levi had committed suicide. That meant that the leader of the Survey Corp was no longer Levi, but Armin himself. He collapsed to the ground and cried.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. P!ease leave a kudos and a comment if you liked it. They give me fuel to come back and write more.


End file.
